cirkleblog

Fighting Food Waste

Did you know, 1.9 million tonnes of food was wasted along the supply chain during 2014/15? The leader in helping organisations achieve greater resource efficiency, WRAP, conducted a Food Waste Report with research from Dr Julian Parfitt, one of the world’s leading authorities on food waste.

Food redistribution is becoming a big issue in the UK and the industry will begin to suffer if we don’t act fast. As many researchers have found, strong resistance is met from many retailers and manufacturers upon approaching them to cut down the levels of waste that is occurring. On the back of this resistance, The Grocer (the FMCG’s industry’s trade ‘bible’ who we work with regularly through our clients’ trade campaigns) has recently launched a major campaign to unite the industry to help reduce the high amount of food waste that has been identified.

Key facts from WRAP report:
• Failure to not help reduce food waste costs the UK food and drink industry £1.9bn in lost sales each year
• There is the potential to reduce avoidable food waste across the grocery sector by 450,000 tonnes by 2025
• 1.8% of total food waste and surplus is currently being redistributed to the poor and needy in the UK
• Retailers and manufacturers diverted 47,000 tonnes of edible, unsold food to people, the equivalent of 91 million meals a year

The Grocer believes retailers and manufacturers can nearly double the current rates of redistribution to 100,000 tonnes of food (100 million meals of year) by the time WRAP revisit the figures in 2018. Retailers and manufacturers can show their support by pledging via email to wastenotwantnot@thegrocer.co.uk

At Cirkle, we applaud the positive move from The Grocer to try and make a difference within an industry we live and breathe. We are seeing companies take big strides on the issue and by working collaboratively we can fight food waste together!